Obviously, Jesus never spoke about a multiverse. The Bible doesn’t contemplate a multiverse, so maybe there’s nothing to say at all. Well, there’s always something to say. And actually there’s something to say that is pretty important, to me personally, both intellectually and spiritually. The Bible, of course, doesn’t speak of a multiverse, but it does say that whatever exists, exists in and through God. And specifically in and through Jesus Christ, the son of God, the second person of the Trinity. 

We find this idea in lots of places. “In the beginning was the Word,” says the opening line of John’s gospel, “and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” John uses the important Greek word logos, translated ‘word,’ but it has a much richer meaning in ancient Greek culture. “In the beginning was the logos,” he says, “the logos was with God and was God, and everything was made through the logos…” and on he goes.

Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus

Colossians 1:15-17

The writer of the Hebrews says the same thing in another New Testament book, but I’m not gonna push the friendship with my non-theological listeners by going through all the passages. 

Here’s my simple point. Whatever kind of bizarre universe or universes exist, they exist in and through God and specifically, Jesus, the logos of God. Whatever scientists discover about reality is fine with me, because they’re just discovering more about the logos that holds all things together. In fact, I’d go further than that and say that it’s precisely because there is logos behind material reality that science is even possible. 

But here’s why this concept is important to me personally. It means God is both loftier than any mere God of the Pagan pantheon, and yet nearer to us than any potential local deity. The Pagan gods were thought of as objects within the creation. They’re not outside creation, holding it all together as the logos. That was never the claim. The gods are more like Marvel characters, they’re part of the story, they’re not the writer of the story itself. But within Christian thought, God is not distant, like a watchmaker who wound up the clock billions of years ago and is now just watching it unwind. Nor is he some lofty, aloof grandfather of the universe. No. The God revealed in Jesus, the logos, is simultaneously transcendent and immanent. At the same time his distance from us is categorical and absolute as the ground of all things, and yet, wonderfully, if in him all things hold together that means he is nearer to me and to you than our own breath.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 8. Article 1

Get alone in a dark room one day and think this thought, even as a thought experiment, the logos who is Jesus is utterly other and above and separate from me as a mere creature in time. The chasm between creator and creature is infinitely vast. And yet because the logos is holding every particle in existence in every moment there is nothing in the universe, not even my own body, that is nearer to me than the logos, who is Jesus. You can press play now, or go to that dark room. 

By John Dickson

Want to hear the rest of the episode?
Check out episode 108: “The Multiverse”